Under Cover of Darkness

The youngest lawyer ever to grab the helm of Seattle's most prominent law firm, Gus Wheatley has found success - as well as money, power, and prestige. He thinks nothing can interfere with his meteoric rise to the top. Until his wife, Beth, vanishes. Beth's disappearance coincides with a series of brutal murders the FBI dubs the "bookend killings". They think Beth is the killer's latest victim...or his willing accomplice. But Gus knows his wife would never ally herself with a cold-blooded killer.

The Abduction

US Attorney General Allison Leahy is the Democrats' best chance for holding on to the Oval Office. But she's running neck and neck with her opponent, Republican Lincoln Howe, a retired four-star general and bona fide African American hero. Then, days before the election, disaster strikes. Twelve-year-old Kristen Howe, the general's granddaughter, is kidnapped.

Found Money

Single mother Amy Parkens feels trapped by a boring job, low pay, and no time for her young daughter. But that's before $200,000 in cold, hard cash arrives in an unmarked box. Desperately needing the money, Amy fears a setup or a connection to her mother's suicide 20 years earlier. So she sets out to find the source.

Money to Burn: A Novel of Suspense

At 31, Michael Cantella is a rising star at Wall Street’s premier investment bank, Saxton Silvers. Everything is going according to plan until Ivy Layton, the love of his life, vanishes on their honeymoon in the Bahamas. Fast-forward four years. It’s the eve of his 35th birthday, and Michael is still on track: successful career, beautiful new wife, piles of money.

A King's Ransom

Two years out of law school, Nick Rey is already on the fast track at a hot Miami law firm. But his dreams of success are overshadowed when his father, Matthew, is abducted while on a business trip to Colombia. The guerillas demand an impossible $3 million ransom - the exact sum Matthew's kidnap-and-ransom insurance policy covers. The insurance company suspects fraud, however, and refuses to pay. And, as Nick soon learns, it isn't the guerillas who hold the key to his father's survival.

The Informant

FBI special agent Victoria Santos is tracking a string of gruesome murders from New York to San Francisco, Miami to Oregon. Meanwhile, Pulitzer Prize-winning Miami Tribune reporter Mike Posten receives a call from a mysterious stranger who claims his mind works so much like the killer's that he can actually predict the next attack: time, place, victim. When the predictions prove true, Mike and Victoria must join forces to find out if this eerie caller is the real psychopath.

Cash Landing: A Novel

Every week a hundred million dollars in cash arrives at Miami International Airport, shipped by German banks to the Federal Reserve. A select group of trusted workers moves the bags through customs and loads them into armored trucks.

Cane and Abe

Samantha died too soon. Abe Beckham's new wife has helped him through the loss, but some say it was a step back for Abe to marry Angelina, a love from his past. Abe doesn't want to hear it, and he's even managed to remain a star prosecutor at the Miami State Attorney's Office through his ups and downs. Then everything goes wrong. A woman's body is discovered dumped in the Everglades, and Abe is called upon to monitor the investigation.

Intent to Kill

Ryan James once had it all. With a beautiful wife and a two-year-old daughter, he was just one minor-league baseball game away from realizing his lifelong dream of playing in the majors when the unthinkable happened: his wife, Chelsea, was killed in a hit-and-run accident while driving to Ryan's last game of the season. Years later, Ryan is a popular "shock jock" at Boston's top-rated sports radio show, doing his best to raise his daughter alone.

Blood Defense

Samantha Brinkman, an ambitious, hard-charging Los Angeles criminal defense attorney, is struggling to make a name for herself and to drag her fledgling practice into the big leagues. Sam lands a high-profile double-murder case in which one of the victims is a beloved TV star - and the defendant is a decorated veteran LAPD detective. It promises to be exactly the kind of media sensation that would establish her as a heavy hitter in the world of criminal law.

Need You Now

The New York Times best-selling author returns with a gripping, new stand-alone novel ripped from the headlines, in which a young financial advisor and his girlfriend uncover a conspiracy that reaches from Wall Street deep into the halls of government. Abe Cushman, the evil genius behind a $60 billion Ponzi scheme, has killed himself and taken his secrets to the grave. For Patrick Lloyd, a young Wall Street advisor at the world’s largest Swiss bank, Cushman’s fall has unexpected - and deadly - repercussions. Lloyd’s girlfriend, Lilly, is directly tied to billions of dollars in losses....

To Speak for the Dead: Jake Lassiter, Book 1

Defending a surgeon in a malpractice case, Jake Lassiter begins to suspect that his client is innocent of negligence...but guilty of murder. Add a sexy widow, a deadly drug, and a grave robbery to the stew, and you have Miami's trial of the century.

Dead End Girl: Violet Darger, Book 1

A serial killer stalks women in rural Ohio. He is deranged but brilliant, known only by the grotesque nickname the media has given him - The Doll Parts Killer. The name is apt. He dismembers his victims and leaves them in garbage bags in public places. A residential neighborhood. Next to a roller rink. Behind a Burger King. The investigation is a disaster. No physical evidence. Unreliable witnesses. To make matters worse, the FBI has lost contact with the star profiler working the case.

Felony Murder

On the surface, the court-appointed case that lands on young Dean Abernathy's desk is a biggie; he is slated to defend a homeless man accused of the felony murder of the popular black New York City Police commissioner during an early-morning mugging attempt. But at second look, the case promises to be a routine conviction. The evidence is overwhelming.

The Switch: A Novel

Michael Tanner is on his way home from a business trip when he accidentally picks up the wrong MacBook in an airport security line. He doesn't notice the mix-up until he arrives home in Boston, but by then it's too late. Tanner's curiosity gets the better of him when he discovers that the owner is a US senator and that the laptop contains top secret files. When Senator Susan Robbins realizes she's come back with the wrong laptop, she calls her young chief of staff, Will Abbott, in a panic.

The Late Show

Renée Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none, as each morning she turns her cases over to day shift detectives. A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor. But one night she catches two cases she doesn't want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Ballard is determined not to give up at dawn.

Shattered: A Novel

Over a span of 20 years, four boys have been kidnapped from their bedrooms, suffocated, and buried nearby in shallow graves. Serial killer or coincidence? That's the question investigative reporter Maxine Revere sets out to answer when an old friend begs her to help exonerate his wife, who has been charged with their son's recent murder. But Max can do little to help because the police and DA won't talk to her - they think they have the right woman.

You Will Pay

It starts as a prank - a way to blow off steam after a long summer at Camp Horseshoe. Among the teen counselors, tensions and hormones are running high. No wonder the others agree when Jo-Beth Chancellor suggests they scare Monica O'Neal a little.... or a lot. Monica has it coming, and no one will really get hurt. What could go wrong? Everything.

Toni R. says:"Waste of a credit. No mystery here, I figured it out before finishing first chapter."

Publisher's Summary

Peyton Shields had always wanted to be a doctor, and now, thanks to her relentless drive, stellar academic credentials, and a mountain of debt to Harvard Medical School, she's a first-year resident at a major Boston children's hospital. The hours are impossibly long but it's the life she wants, complete with a husband who's an up-and-coming young lawyer.

But a late-night drive home in a heavy snowstorm changes everything. A car coming straight at her drives her off the road and into a frozen pond. Peyton knows she'd be dead if a stranger hadn't pulled her from the wreckage before vanishing into the darkness. In an instant her wonderful life has turned dark. No one believes her claims that the "accident" was deliberate; not even her husband. Without explanation, he has become distant and bitter, calling her paranoid and accusing her of having an affair with a former lover.

Yet the terror has only begun, for a series of strange, increasingly dangerous events begin to plague Peyton, moving her closer to a faceless and very deadly enemy who seems to know her every move.

What the Critics Say

"Grippando grips you from the first page." (Harlan Coben)"James Grippando is a very inventive and ingenious storyteller." (Nelson DeMille)"Grippando is up there with the new class of best-selling legal novelists." (James Patterson)

I am an MD and had to stop reading at the very first of the book. A needle in a thigh will "not go to the heart", a peds resident can do minor procedures like what was described, and giving some one a shot of barbiturate for restraint is unethical (could have just tied him up) No one who knows anything about guns would give a warning shot. I had no sympathy for the character and felt she very poor judgement and deserved what she got--(don't know what that was because I did not finish the book) This was a wasted credit. Linda

Never quite sure that men authors should make women their central character or vice versa. There are of course exceptional exceptions. The male stalker is much more compelling than Peyton - but none of it quite works. Not enough depth, and none of it helped by the narrator. Just having a woman as a central character is not enough reason to cast a woman as a narrator. The whole topic of stalking, lurking malevolence and violent death is better delivered by a really good male narrator. This woman narrator has a curiously staccato delivery and a rather strained voice that does nothing to enhance the atmosphere or engage the listener.

I have listened to early books by the author and liked them. This was a sad attempt at book writing. Did the author go to his files and find an early book that was rejected by his publishers? The characters in this book behaved as if they had no brains in their educated heads. The married couple were disconnected from each other and made such poor decisions it was hard (no, impossible) to be sympathetic towards them. At times during the trial we hoped they would both get the death penalty so we could be done with the book. We listened to the whole thing and wish we had given up early and not wasted our time with this book. No redeeming features at all.

This is a second read for me of a book that's been in my library for a long time. I wasn't able to finish it this time around. Yes, there is suspense, but while waiting for the plot to progress there is just too much distrust between Jamie and her husband, sexual encounters and almost encounters, and Jamie spending lots of time being anguished about all sorts of things/